Secunet Consolidates IT Infrastructure With Riverbed's WDS Solutions
Riverbed Technology, Inc. the technology and market leader in wide-area data services (WDS), announced recently that secunet Security Networks AG, one of Europe's leading suppliers of products and services in the area of highly complex IT security solutions, has selected and deployed Riverbed's Steelhead WDS appliances at sites across Germany. secunet deployed Riverbed's Steelhead appliances at its seven offices across Germany as part of its efforts to simplify its IT and reduce management costs, while at the same time improving application performance to make remote employees more productive.
secunet renders security services, such as consultancy and systems solutions, for information security and related activities in telecommunications and information technology. They provide services in the areas of identity management, network solutions, and card solutions for security and payment processing. The company also provides services in the areas of security consulting and management. Their customers comprise medium-sized enterprises, as well as national and international public bodies. The company is based in Essen, Germany and is a subsidiary of Giesecke & Devrient GmbH.
secunet's IT department sought to consolidate its IT infrastructure in order to more effectively manage their systems and reduce costs. One of the conditions was that the network security provided by secunet's Secure Inter-Network Architecture (SINA) may not be affected. SINA is an IP-based VPN technology from secunet that encrypts traffic between remote sites. secunet's small IT department found itself continually trying to keep pace with their increasing network complexity. Carsten Borkus, secunet partner and manager of systems administration, recalled the situation the company was facing, "In order to keep each of our seven offices running smoothly, IT consultants were hired as part-time administrators at each site, increasing costs to the company. At the same time, we knew that poor application performance over the wide area network (WAN) was affecting employee productivity."
Mr. Borkus continued, "It was an interesting dilemma, how to make our IT easier to manage but at the same time make our employees more productive." secunet chose Riverbed's solutions to overcome the competing demands of simplicity and performance. Working with MTI Technology GmbH, a system integrator that specializes in storage solutions, secunet's IT team deployed Steelhead appliances at its six remote sites and corporate headquarters.
According to Borkus, "We had no difficulties installing the Steelhead appliances. They were especially easy to integrate into our existing SINA infrastructure. Our team found the setup process quite simple. It required minimal configuration, and then simply plugging in the device. We saw results immediately. Our first thoughts were 'this is unbelievable' and 'the reports must be wrong.' We noticed and so did the remote workers that file and network access was incredibly fast. We didn't have to time it to see how many seconds we saved. The results were obvious to anyone who had tried to work over the WAN before."
secunet saw benefits beyond application performance, including a sustained decrease in the amount of bandwidth they were using. With Steelhead appliances, they freed up on average 35 percent of their bandwidth; and, at peak times, about 93 percent. The combination of the increased performance and the decreased bandwidth utilization meant that the company could successfully consolidate its remote servers. Following deployment of the Steelhead appliances, secunet's IT group consolidated the company's 14 remote servers.
Borkus commented, "The consolidation of our servers meant that we could also save the time of IT administrators in those locations, and give them more strategic projects to work on. Part of the reason for this is that the Steelhead appliances are so easy to manage. We manage them in conjunction with the Central Management Console (CMC). The statistics provided are very helpful and informative. The boxes just do their job without the need for much maintenance work, which is very important to us as we are a small IT department."
Borkus summed up the project by describing secunet's return on investment with Riverbed . "First, are the 14 consolidated servers. We no longer have to pay for the refresh of that equipment. More importantly, our administrators can spend time on more important projects than server management. Next, there is the bandwidth savings. It's easy to put a number on pushing our additional bandwidth investments. Finally, there are the performance gains. It is hard to put a value on more productive employees, but everyone understands that people are our most important asset. The more we can do to make them productive and happy, the better it is for our clients and our company. Riverbed has helped us achieve this goal."
Steelhead Products
Riverbed's WDS solutions enable organizations of all sizes to overcome a host of severe problems, including poor application performance and insufficient bandwidth at remote sites. By speeding the performance of applications between data centers, remote offices and mobile workers by five to 50 times and in some cases up to 100 times, Riverbed's award-winning Steelhead WDS products enable companies to consolidate IT, improve backup and replication processes to ensure data integrity, and improve staff productivity and collaboration. Steelhead products have been deployed in organizations ranging from the world's largest corporations with offices around the globe to small companies with a couple of sites that are just miles apart. To learn more, view Riverbed's demo: www.riverbed.com/pr/jack.
About Riverbed
Riverbed Technology is the technology and market leader in wide-area data services (WDS) solutions for companies worldwide. By enabling application performance over the wide area network (WAN) that is orders of magnitude faster than what users experience today, Riverbed is changing the way people work, and enabling a distributed workforce that can collaborate as if they were local. Additional information about Riverbed is available at www.riverbed.com.
SOURCE: Riverbed Technology, Inc.